Click bait headline, bronze doesn’t rust. Yes it is unusually well preserved but it would be more interesting if it had rusted, since that would mean a iron age weapon was found in a bronze age site.

These magnificent qualities did not prevent that in 1994, when the weapon was going to be transported to Singapore for an exhibition, a worker accidentally struck the case and caused a seven-millimeter crack in the sword. Since then, it has been forbidden to take it out of the country, and it has only been moved to transfer it from the National Palace Museum in Taipei, where it was originally held, to the Hubei Provincial Museum.

Dang that sucks